Pre-Halloween snow

Oh, goodness, I can't believe I haven't written in here for 2 months.  Ridiculous!  I'm going to revamp how I do things here.  I think the blog must be about more than gardening because I have so much more going on.  I'm a mom, I like to cook, I have other hobbies.  

But in the vein of the title of this blog, I want to show you just how snowy it can be around here.  

We had big plans for Halloween this year.  A bunch of friends were coming over.  I decorated inside and outside the house.  My husband built a coffin and a crypt facade for a little Haunted House.  Since we live in a village and many of our friends live in the country they all came to our house to watch the trick n' treaters.  My husband dressed as a mummy and laid in his coffin to scare the kids when they came up our walk.  I bought lots of booze, made too much food and even got my hands on some dry ice.

But two days before Halloween, on the 29th, we got 18" of snow.

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In this area, snow is a way of life. No one bats an eye. You never see people at the grocery store before a predicted snow storm loading up on toilet paper and jugs of water like you did in my hometown of Philadelphia. People still go to work when it snows. Life goes on. And 18", that's nothing around here. But when the 18" is heavy wet snow and falls on trees that still have many of their leaves, that causes substantial damage. We lost our power for most of the day. School was cancelled. And it kind of put a damper on our Halloween plans. How would we put up the graveyard and crypt in a yard full of snow?

The next morning, the day before Halloween, my husband blew the snow out of the yard with the snowblower. When it broke down, as it is want to do, we shoveled snow out of the yard. Halloween day was warm and sunny and much of the piles melted and we had a great party.